Ninety Nine Point Nine Percent
by ShoshanaFlower
Summary: A short fic centering around The Host, who is seen in only four issues of Marvel’s limited series “Mystique.”


**99.9 Percent**

I give the man behind the counter the fake name under which I've registered the hotel room. He hands me the plastic key. There is a small lobby on my way to the elevator, and as I pass it I'm assaulted by one of the stock commercials that plagues every television station.

"_Kills 99.9 percent of germs."_

They think nothing of a statement like that. To them, it is nothing like "Kills 99.9 percent of Jews."

Tonight it is a T.V. commercial that accosts me, but if not that, than it would be an internet add for hand sanitizer or anti-bacterial soap. The happy child using the foaming soap, the smiling mother keeping her family 'safe.' I would like to see the reaction to an anti-mutant soap. I don't even own a T.V., and yet I'm still subject to this genocidal propaganda.

Thankfully, the elevator is empty and I don't have to stand near the offensively 'clean' humans. The United States prides itself on being so germ-phobic, and looks down on the 'degrading' conditions that the third world countries must endure. They indoctrinate their young before they can speak about the evils of germs, and how we must kill all of them before than can hurt us. The western world's socially engineered crusade is so severe that they are now, inadvertently, breeding stronger life forms that are resistant to the new, anti-bacterial weapons.

But they think I'm the one who's crazy.

Insane for speaking out for an entire world of life that the currently dominant species spends massive amounts of time and money trying to annihilate. Today, they lament overpopulation, political problems, wars, ad infinitum. They're so quick to brush over the fact that, until recent millennia, humans did not exist in the numbers that they do today. They lived alongside animals, plants, and the dreaded microbes. They didn't use advanced weapons to ensure their wrongful place at the top of the food chain. They, like everything else, were subject to death and disease. Sometimes the man overcame the disease. Sometimes the disease overcame the man. This way humans were not overburdening their world, and pathogens were not hunted to extinction.

My hotel room is sterile. I hate the smell of disinfectant. The smell of microbial holocaust.

Humans are always so quick to eliminate life forms they can't be bothered to understand - even other humans. All I seek to do is restore the balance. I'm not a microbe-supremist, but I will aid my children in every way in the defense against their genocide. Humans will kill themselves off eventually, but how many more species will they kill before that time comes? It's time the homo sapiens and homo superiors learned their place again. If properly directed, my anxious army could reduce the population of humans back to their proper number.

I plug my laptop into the receptacle by the night stand and sit on the bed. It will take a few minutes for the computer to start up, and I'm surprisingly tired. While the machine beeps and gurgles, I stretch out on the bed, turning my nose away from the stench of laundry detergent.

I hear something.

Under the bed sheets. I pull the covers down and listen.

"Yes, some of you have survived," I say, regarding the few remaining bacteria on the surface of the mattress. They're rebuilding their population, and other new colonies are already emerging. Behind the ceiling panels as well, I hear the voices of a young mildew colony. _'Don't grow too strong,'_ I warn them. _'Don't let them notice you or they'll kill you all.'_ One day, hotel management will hire an exterminator to destroy them. But now, perhaps they'll be able to live a little longer with my advice.

My computer has started, and I turn my attention to it. I need to do research to learn about the new tuberculosis strains that are rumored to have been found.

"One day, my lovely children. One day I'll even out the scales again." I've known that this was my destiny for years. It is my vocation.

"The Host: Kills 99.9 of humans."

* * *

Mystique issues 7-10 feature the 'villainess' The Host. She is a mutant with the ability to communicate with and safely carry pathogenic life forms. She calls herself a freedom fighter, and wants to liberate the species of disease that humans are trying to eliminate. 

I thought The Host was an amazing new character, and I'm a little sad that nothing else was ever done with her. If Vaughan ever writes a mainstream X-title, he'd better bring her back.


End file.
